Historiikeista tieteellisiin julkaisuihin ja true crime -ilmiöön – Suomalaisen poliisihistorian rakennuspalikat

Authors

• Marko Piipponen Itä-Suomen yliopisto

DOI: https://doi.org/10.37449/ennenjanyt.148262

Keywords:

Historiikki, Kirjallisuuskatsaus, Muistelmat, Suomen poliisi, Poliisikirjallisuus, Poliisihistoria, True crime

Abstract

In my literature review, I examine works related to the history of policing that contribute to the broader narrative of Finnish police history. Publications on police history can be divided into three categories: histories, academic publications, and memoirs. The first publication on Finnish police history is a history from 1936, which focused on the Viipuri police department. Histories typically concentrated on the activities of local police forces or police associations. The publication of histories increased during the 1970s, as police officers sought to document the past of their profession in anniversary publications. The number of published police histories decreased in the 2010s. The number of potential subjects for such histories decreased due to previously published histories. The scholarly turn in police history began in the 1980s at the University of Helsinki, where master's theses on Finnish police history were produced. As a result of this academic turn, the first doctoral dissertation on police history was published in 1992 by Tuija Hietaniemi, titled Lain vartiossa: Poliisi Suomen politiikassa 1917–1948. This dissertation integrated police history into the broader context of political history, thereby laying the foundation for academic research on Finnish police history. Following Hietaniemi's dissertation, academic publications on police history became more common, enriching the historical perspective on Finnish policing up to the present day. Since the 1990s, police memoirs have predominantly been self-published. The publication of police memoirs evolved in the 2010s as part of the true crime phenomenon, leading to a significant increase in their publication rate, as publishers sought to capitalize on the lucrative true crime market. At the end of this article, I highlight the research gaps related to Finnish police history.